Six Classic Monster Images Hollywood Gets Dead Wrong, Part Two

Mummies

Made famous by Boris Karloff, the image of the mummy as wrapped in bandages with a virtual grab bag of super powers is more a sprucing up of a relatively boring monster than indicative of mummy legend.

After the first few times you see a mummy walking no faster than a zombie and moaning as he ambles slowly closer, you start to wonder: what the hell could he do to me?

So, shaped largely by the popular films such as The Mummy series starring otherwise gigless Brendan Frasier, modern mummy lore includes intangibility, flight, super strength, and pretty much the combined (albeit filched) power repertoire of Spiderman's transfigured foe, The Sandman.

In legend, however, mummies were not the stuff of horror, but a cultural belief in life after death. Largely amid the Ancient Egyptians, mummification had little do with things that go bump in the night, but was a means of burial that would keep important figures in tact for the afterlife, hence burying them with worldly riches as well as necessities, such as food.

Naturally, just as ghosts have long held a fear factor, cultures have tied mummy lore to the fear of the undead, but it was Hollywood who created the modern mummy and all his mysterious and ambiguous powers.